THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 349 



or even roughening them by a few burrs with a chisel. Having at 

 length grasped the lump and put it on the fire, you begin to read ; but, 

 before you have got through the first column, you are reminded, by 

 the changes of position which your sensations prompt, that men still 

 fail to make easy-chairs. And yet the guiding principle is simple 

 enough. Just that advantage secured by using a soft seat in place 

 of a hard one the advantage, namely, of spreading over a larger area 

 the pressure of the weight to be borne, and so making the pressure 

 less intense at any one point is an advantage to be sought in the 

 form of the chair. Ease is to be gained by making the shapes and 

 relative inclinations of seat and back such as will evenly distribute 

 the weight of the trunk and limbs over the widest possible supporting 

 surface, and with the least straining of the parts out of their natural 

 attitudes. And yet only now, after these thousands of years of civili- 

 zation, are there being reached (and that not rationally but empiri- 

 cally) approximations to the structure required. 



Such are the experiences of the first hour ; and so they continue 

 all the day through. If you watch and criticise, you may see that the 

 immense majority bring to bear, even on those actions which it is the 

 business of their lives to carry on effectually, an extremely small 

 amount of faculty. Get a workman to do something for you that is 

 more or less new, and not the clearest explanations and sketches will 

 prevent him from blundering ; and, to any expression of surprise, he 

 will reply that he was not brought up to it : scarcely ever betraying 

 the slightest shame in confessing that he cannot do a thing he was not 

 taught to do. Similarly throughout the higher grades of activity. 

 Remember how generally improvements in manufactures come from 

 outsiders, and you are at once shown with what mere unintelligent rou- 

 tine manufactures are commonly carried on. Examine into the man- 

 agement of mercantile concerns, and you perceive that those engaged 

 in them mostly do nothing more than move in the ruts that have 

 gradually been made for them by the process of trial and error during 

 a long succession of generations. Indeed, it almost seems as though 

 most men made it their aim to get through life with the least possible 

 expenditure of thought. 



How, then, can there be looked for such power of self-guidance as, 

 in the absence of inherited authoritative rules, would require them to 

 understand why, in the nature of things, these modes of action are in- 

 jurious and those modes beneficial would require them to pass be- 

 yond proximate results, and see clearly the involved remote results as 

 worked out on self, on others, and on society ? 



The incapacity need not, indeed, be inferred ; it may be seen, if we 

 do but take an action concerning which the sanctified code is silent. 

 Listen to a conversation about gambling ; and, where reprobation is 

 expressed, note the grounds of the reprobation. That it tends toward 

 the ruin of the gambler ; that it risks the welfare of family and friends ; 



